


The Price of your Bones

by kiiouex, telekinesiskid



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Claustrophobia, Elements of Horror, Graphic Injury, M/M, POV Second Person, lack of autonomy, the eternal suffering of Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex, https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid/pseuds/telekinesiskid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t keep doing this,” you scream, like Cabeswater can’t hear the very whisper of your deepest, most private thoughts. “You can’t keep pulling me out of class or work or-- you just can’t. I want to back out of this deal.” </p><p>But you know in your heart that you can’t have your free will back any more than Noah can have his life back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of your Bones

**Author's Note:**

> okay so............. thi s fic...... it's been in development for at least a week now. I wrote most of it, then got sick of it and handed it off to my wife, who in turn got sick of it and handed it back haha. The point is!!!! It is finally finished phew. Collaborative efforts are both exhausting and fun :D
> 
> so yeah, [kiiouex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex) both partly wrote and thoroughly beta'd this fic ;o from CAMP nonetheless!!! what a trooper

The first time it happens, you think you’re dreaming.

Your eyes open. You blink slow as the world brightens and sensations start to flood back into you, keen and unearthly: the feel of wet moss furred over trunks, soaking your knees; the intermittent drops of fat rain water from canopies above, on the back of your sore, cricked neck; your shirt sticking damply from wet and dry sweat; the discordant warmth and chill of your skin, partly from sun, partly from shade, partly from exhaustion nestled deep in your muscles.

The pulse of the ley is steady, reliable, an easy rhythm that lines up perfectly with the beat of your heart. As you lumber awkwardly up, you realise your feet are bare, pink with cold, and you can barely feel them, barely move. You’re not even in your day clothes; you’re still in the ratty shirt and sweat pants that you crawled into just before bed. It’s odd; the dream feels so _real_. You know when you wake you’ll only think, “I dreamt I was in Cabeswater,” and won’t recall any of the little details bringing it all to life. It fills you with a sense of wonder and misery all at once.

It’s incredible to think that it’s late morning here, when it should be no earlier than five o’clock in reality. You walk around for a while, treading light and careful, keeping to the drier, sunnier areas. The air is full with the scent of bark, of moss, of fresh dew, of ancient fungi, of mounds of dry leaves and clumps of dead ones, of mist and magic and _Cabeswater._ You’re still not entirely sure how this works; you’re not sure if you’re really _in_ Cabeswater, because Cabeswater is a dream, or if you’re bound by the confines of _your_ particular dream. Your heart holds out a shapeless flicker of hope that you’ll come across Ronan, but the rational part of you is unaffected by wonder and reminds you that you have more important matters to attend to.

You walk away from the ley line’s hum, retreating from the ebb and flow of it, and that’s how you find your way out of the woods. You stumble out through the treeline into fresh, morning light and follow the slope of the earth down, painfully aware of a familiar weariness settling deep in your bones, painfully aware of the dirt under your nails. You stop dead at the end of the track.

It’s your Hondayota.

But you didn’t drive to Cabeswater. At least, you don’t think you did.

You approach, slow and cautious, as if you’re not sure whether to trust your eyes, but it is unmistakably _your_ tri-coloured Frankensteinian monster of a vehicle. But it’s unlocked, the driver’s door is improperly shut and through the window you see your keys hanging from the ignition.

You look back down at your night clothes. _I didn’t drive here, did I?_

You climb back into your car and close the door, not sure if you’re awake or in a dream; _you_ don’t feel real, but everything else does. In your rear view mirror, you catch a glimpse of your eyes, alert with muted panic and confusion, as unsettled as you feel. You heard, once, that machines in dreams aren’t meant to work, and you swallow thickly as you force your hand to turn the key. The car stutters into life it shouldn’t have. You look at the time the radio displays and your brow furrows even further. _It’s nine o’clock?_

But it can’t be nine o’clock. That would make you late for school and you’re never late for school. You _can’t_ be late for school.

You don’t think anymore; you just drive. You floor it and your Hondayota shoots unevenly forward down the dirt road, back towards the city. Your heart hammers in your chest, nailing you back into your seat, and you just can’t _think_ about it right now; you fumble anxiously for the mixtape Ronan made you and you don’t even care that it’s just twelve renditions of Murder Squash.

 

You think it’s because Kavinsky died; all that power freed up, Cabeswater glutted and glorious on its own energy. Maybe it got a taste for power. Maybe it grew a hatred of humans. Even when you’re there with the others, you think you can feel it now, a malignant shiver to the air. Something has changed. The forest is hungrier than when you first entered.

 

The second time it happens, you’re a little luckier; you’re amongst friends. Not that they didn’t believe you the first time you told them what had happened – you have no reason to sporadically miss school anymore – but you hope that they’ll _understand_ now.

You feel the exact moment you start to slip out of your body. One second you’re idly translating the poem you’ve been asked to learn for French, and the next you’re still, _very_ still. Everything – the backdrop of Nino’s, Gansey’s spiel, your single glass of Coke – starts to slow and slur and pitch off-balance, and, for a full moment, you’re overcome with the aroma of Cabeswater and the sound of leaves and the feel of dirt and the splinters of sticks and then--

You abruptly segue into an unfamiliar field, eyes wide open and _awake._

The sky is clouded purple and orange with sunset, not at all how you last saw it, and you realise that you’ve lost hours.

You try to scramble to your feet and throw yourself backwards at the same time, your chest bursting with outrage and _fear,_ and you land poorly on something that pulls out from underneath you very quickly. You first instinct is to draw away – _snake,_ your mind hisses _–_ but then you’re aware of murmured curses behind you and the unmistakable feel of hands on your shoulders.

Your head darts up; kneeling behind you is Ronan, too close and too soon. “Easy there, Parrish,” he murmurs. One hand lazily pats your shoulder, like he’s trying to soothe one of his barn animals when they startle, but you don’t miss the way he swallows like it takes some effort. You can see how rapid his pulse is from the hard tendon standing out on his neck. “You’re OK.”

Gansey whirls around to kneel in front of you, his face a pretty picture of concern. “Adam?” he tries, and the fretful, hopeful tone of his voice makes you think that he hasn’t had a response from you in a while.

“Yeah?” you croak back, and his eyes close as he allows himself a brief moment of relief.

“You didn’t answer before,” he tells you. You feel numb; you feel trapped inside yourself as you watch him rub his palms together, over and over. “We didn’t know if you could even hear us. Could you hear us?”

“Gansey, I don’t remember a thing,” you blurt. Ronan’s hands are still on your shoulders and they heave with your quick, untamed breaths. “I don’t— I’m not—”

Gansey puts a hand to your upper arm. “It’s OK,” he assures you, but even Gansey doesn’t sound too convinced. His eyes lower from your face. “It was… rather alarming to see. I know what you mean, now. You just… stopped, and something else stepped in. You stared right through us.”

“I took pics,” Ronan mentions, one hand going to fetch his phone, but Gansey bats it away irritably.

“We tried to talk to you, but you just…” Gansey shakes his head, still awed by the whole event. “Upped and left. No goodbye, nothing.”

“You didn’t even pay for your drink.”

“Mm, that’s right, you didn’t. That was when I was absolutely _sure_ that something was wrong.”

You place your first foot on the ground; Gansey steps back and Ronan makes a series of awkward moves to both help you up and give you your space. When he finally takes his hands off you, he scrubs them profusely into his jeans, over and over.

You swallow, try to calm down. With a hollow smile you ask Gansey, “Did you think I was just being rude?”

He smiles back at you, weary. “I’d thought it was something I’d said.”

“Well, that’s a safe bet.”

You can’t believe that they really followed you, watched over you, to ensure no harm would befall you. Your chest clenches with too many emotions that you try to swallow back down, and you turn to see an abstract assembly of sticks at your feet. It’s too odd to have come about naturally; it must’ve been your handiwork. Or, rather, Cabeswater’s.

 _“Hey,”_ Ronan calls out to both of you, and he’s already several feet away; he’s wading through the flax field, back towards the road where both the Hondayota and the Pig lie. Your eyes find a farm house not too far from where you stand with darkened windows and rusty tractors and hay-filled sheds. “The owners are back. Unless you want to explain what the fuck we’re doing in their field, let’s move it.”

Your eyes squint as you watch Ronan turn. From here his palms look _pink_ , like sunburn or violent impulse.

“C’mon,” Gansey prompts you forward and you both follow Ronan back. “Mind your step. There are some wicked thorns lying about.”

You glance at him, frowning. You don’t even see any plants underfoot, let alone ones that you should be wary of. “Out here?”

“Well. We were trying to stop you.” He flashes a grim smile at you and holds up his palms for you to see. They’re not quite as pink as Ronan’s, but you can see now that they’re dotted with little red-black punctures, like they’ve been pressed hard into a bed of tacks. _Not tacks,_ you think. _Thorns. From me._

A shiver of horror at what you are courses through you. “Sorry,” you murmur, dipping your head in shame.

Gansey waves a dismissive arm, like it couldn’t bother him less. “Don’t worry about us. Our concern is you; are you alright, now?”

It’s such a genuine, worried ask; you’re not sure how to respond other than truthfully. “I don’t know.”

It’s happened twice now. You think it might happen again.

 

You act like you’re not entirely sure why Cabeswater turned to puppetry but, deep down, you think you know why it did. You had too much on your plate. You _already_ had too much on your plate, and for Cabeswater to then demand that you pull time out of nowhere, time that you just don’t _have,_ to tend to the ley line’s crooked links, was just too much. Cabeswater threw everything it could at you, just to get your attention, and even as you told it “later, later” it still demanded “now, now”. Naturally, it just got sick of waiting.

You won’t deny that don’t miss the pointless tarot readings, the barrage of horrific imagery, and the oftentimes dangerous act of scrying.

But _God_ , would you prefer all that misery to losing chunks of your day at random.

 

The tenth time it happens, you’re sick of it.

You come awake to sharp, quick throbs in the last two fingers of your left hand. You raise them wearily to your head, still swimming, and when your eyes finally refocus, you see that they’re caked in black dirt. It’s nothing new; Cabeswater often requires you to unearth rocks and shift vast amounts of dirt, yet doesn’t ever consider fetching you a shovel. But, once you rinse most of the filth away in a stream, you see your skin is swollen red and bruised purple. Dangerous colours, making primal fear spike through you.

Hesitantly, already shaking, you flex the fingers and the bullet of broken agony that shoots down your arm forces a low hiss from your mouth. Your eyes find whatever it was Cabeswater just had you do – you’re actually _in_ Cabeswater this time, sure enough – and you don’t doubt from the size of those stones that they would crush any fingers caught under them.

But it’s not that Cabeswater hurt your fingers - _broke_ them, however inadvertently - it’s that Cabeswater continued to use them as though they were still functional. It pushed further than you should be pushed, worsened the damage, and now there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to properly recover before it calls on you again.

“God dammit, Cabeswater,” you mutter under your breath as you cradle your broken fingers. You don’t expect it to, but you still wish Cabeswater would make the effort to respond. It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t, it has its new system now and you wonder if it’s a little proud of how well it works, even though it’s at your expense. Why should it bother to clumsily make contact with you when it can just make you do exactly what it wants, whenever it wants?

You check your watch and curse because time might stand still here but it’s not a short distance to travel. Your watch is paused on 13:43 and you try to recall the last instant you were properly awake and present. You remember being in geography-- no, it was Latin. You’d just sat down. Gansey was politely indulging tales of Cheng’s latest council crusade, and Ronan was drawing anarchy symbols on Cheng’s rumpled books. You were already woozy, people stared when the teacher had to call your name for the roll twice, and…

That’s the last thing you remember.

That was at least two hours ago.

Tears fill your eyes and heat fills your cheeks. Your eyes find a stone you must have unearthed, still stained brown with dirt, and your foot connects before you realise you’re lashing out. You kick hard enough that it flies several feet before crashing into the stream, spraying your dirtied trousers and making your foot ache victoriously. It should bring you some relief, but today you’re far from satisfied.

 _“_ I can’t keep _doing this,”_ you scream, like Cabeswater can’t hear the very whisper of your deepest, most private thoughts. “You can’t keep pulling me out of class or work or-- you just _can’t._ I want to back out of this deal.”

But you know in your heart that you can’t have your free will back any more than Noah can have his life back. You’re a part of Cabeswater and Cabeswater is a part of you. It keeps you alive, and safe, and keeps the ley line thriving, but in exchange it robs you of your time. It picks you up, the vines rooted deep in your veins so easy for it to pull on. You’d thought you were familiar with helplessness before Cabeswater, but now you know the value of autonomy, the cost of its loss, and there’s nothing you loathe more.

You’re humiliated and frustrated, shaking with it, deep in your core and in your hands. You don’t know if Cabeswater is even listening to you anymore. You don’t know if Cabeswater will ever listen again.

 _I’ll make it listen,_ you think. With your unbroken hand, you seize another stone and haul it with all your might at the assembly of rocks Cabeswater had decreed more important than Aglionby. Your shot knocks them all out of alignment and they tumble down, skitter and roll away. Your fury quiets abruptly, like a fire suddenly doused, and you’re overwhelmed with the terrified sense that _you shouldn’t have done that--_

You jolt awake. You’re kneeling by the display, standing stones in impeccable formation, your broken fingers blistering with agony.

You feel a scream build in the very back of your throat but it dies on your tongue the second you open your mouth. It’s completely pointless. You let out a pathetic, sad puff of air instead and crawl back up to your feet. You find your Hondayota, left out in the open and ripe for theft, and start the journey back into town.

On the drive back to school you keep one hand braced much more loosely on the wheel than the other, mindful of the swollen, purple things that have replaced your fingers. Your wild heartbeat pulses right through them, or perhaps it’s the ley line, or perhaps it’s both. Pain is a constant stream of tight throbs that you don’t dare try to shake out. You’ve averted broken bones and fractures for most of your life; it just fills you with a sense of arrogance and righteous fury that even you - _you -_ can take better care of yourself than Cabeswater can.

Even though school is over, you still have to fetch your blazer and your homework. The classrooms are barren of students and even teachers by now, and you slip back in to find your desk empty and your bag missing. For a few long moments you flounder in a well of _why would anything go right_ , and then you notice a post-it note stuck to your desk.

You lean closer to read and all it says, in Gansey’s messy academic scrawl: _Your things are at Monmouth._

A sigh hisses out between your teeth. With your good hand, you scrunch up the note, miss the bin as you leave, and crossly start for Monmouth. _Just fucking great,_ you think, even as you make a concentrated effort to temper your irritation and be _thankful_ that Gansey didn’t leave your possessions to get nicked or vandalised. You know that it’s not _him_ you’re furious with, but his corporality and conceivableness make him such an easy target by comparison. Still, you think, _what a waste of my time._

Every fraction of unconscious movement in your hand renews the keen ache, keeps it fresh. It looks bad. It’s going to be hard to work around, it’s going to need to be treated and dressed. You can only hope it can be fixed with a bit of board and some gauze, not an overpriced hospital visit.

When you finally make it to Monmouth, you’re exhausted. Gansey throws open the door on your arrival and you announce wearily, before he can ask, “It happened again.”

He doesn’t have any more condolences for you other than a look that is probably sympathetic to him but pitying to you. “I convinced everyone you were ill and needed to leave class immediately, without delay. And without comment.”

It’s not the first time he’s covered for you and know with a bitter pang in your chest that it’s probably far from the last. “Thank you,” you mumble and he stands aside to let you in. The whole gang’s here, and normally you’d make an effort - small talk with Blue and Noah, an attempt to sound awake and human - but today you just fall back on the leather couch and stare at the rafters.

You hear Ronan knocking cue balls around behind you. “Cabeswater?” he checks.

You sigh. “Cabeswater.”

He grunts and takes another shot. Noah informs him it’s an illegal move.

“Gansey,” you say, voice quiet, and when he looks at you, you hold up your crushed fingers, the bruises and swelling looking all the worse against the gentle light in Monmouth. Gansey’s mood shifts instantly and he rushes into the bathroom/kitchen/laundry to fetch his first aid kit. It was a fairly recent purchase, more for Ronan than you, but you’ve still been taking advantage of it. You wonder if Gansey enjoys playing doctor or if it’s just the role he reluctantly assumes because no one else can take care of themselves.

He settles on the floor in front of you and starts to build a temporary splint out of some pens and tape. You try not to let the wince in your face show as clearly as the wince in your hand. “You will need to see a real doctor,” Gansey informs you as he carefully presses one of Ronan’s cold beers to your skin, frost meeting burn.

“Fine,” you sigh, because there’s no point debating it and there’s nothing else you can do. At least it’s only a minor injury. “Soon.”

He holds up a packet of painkillers and you only waver for three seconds before you accept two pills.

From Gansey’s bed, Blue asks, “What happened to your hand?”

You don’t look at her or Noah, who’s perched beside her, acutely aware of the sudden silence that fills the room. You swallow dryly and explain, “Cabeswater crushed my fingers while moving around some rocks.”

“Ouch,” she responds, and to her credit, she does seem genuinely sorry for you. “I’m sure it didn’t mean to.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t care,” you mumble.

“Can’t _you_ do something?” Gansey asks, but this is directed over your head, at Ronan. _The Greywaren._

“Cabeswater does whatever the fuck it wants,” Ronan says, and there’s a brief pause as he lines up, takes another shot, another swig of beer. “I can’t do shit.”

Gansey shoots Ronan the thin, withering kind of look that you’ve secretly grown fond of these past few months. It reads: _I would make a better boyfriend than you._

“It’s not even the broken fingers,” you murmur, and you immediately regret it because you hadn’t realised just how little you can accomplish. You feel the harsh burn of cold compete with the throbbing pain in your hand. “What if I’m thrown out of Aglionby?”

“I can always cover for you,” Gansey assures, but you shake your head.

“Doesn’t matter what excuse you give; too many absences is enough grounds for expulsion, Gansey.”

“He’s right,” Ronan cuts in, like the expert on expulsion he is. “I was given that warning.”

Gansey continues to fret over your hand and exhales wearily, at a loss of how to help but overwhelmed with the desire to do _something._ “Have you tried reasoning with it?”

You think of how you ruined the rupture in the ley line you had just fixed, and you look away shamefully. “I could try harder.”

“Maybe you can teach Cabeswater to respect you again,” Blue advises but you just stare at her, confused. “Assert yourself.”

_How?_

The question goes unanswered, and you lie boneless on the couch as the night wears on. Gansey leaves to take Blue home, and Noah just leaves. Your ear pricks as the pool cue is tossed carelessly away. You feel Ronan’s shadow press in over you, uncomfortably close, almost oppressive, but then you look up and it’s just… Ronan. He leans over the back of the couch, one arm to keep the beer and one arm to hang loosely by your head. Every now and then his thumb brushes the skin just under your deaf ear. It’s moments like this, little snippets of affection from someone who barely remembers what love is and is long out of practice, that makes your heart soar and sink in a way you can’t describe. For all that you’d like to think you understand Ronan Lynch, he’s about as wayward and mysterious to you as Cabeswater.

After a while the painkillers creep in and drowsiness settles heavily on you, presses you further back into the couch. You’re too comfortable where you lie; your eyes want to close and stay closed but you force them back open. You so, so desperately want to _sleep,_ but you don’t want to lose consciousness and you don’t want to dissociate, not even for a minute. You’ve lost so much time today already.

 

Every spare moment that you have, it’s dedicated to Cabeswater. _Please,_ your mind whispers as you phase out once more, at school, at work, on a commute, by Ronan’s side, _Please talk to me. Tell me what to do. Don’t take my body for a joyride again. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it._

You wait.

But nothing.

“Maybe nothing needs doing right now,” Noah says optimistically, and you appreciate that he tries for you, you do. But you can’t help the resentful words that fill your head, and then he’s gone.

 

One time after you’ve lost count, it’s just bad luck. You’re just sitting up in your flat, not at school, not hungry, picking at a loose thread from the cuff of your suit, counting down in your head the minutes before it’s time to go to court and you’ll have to see your father again.

You don’t even notice Cabeswater try to take you this time; you were already well out of your fragile husk of a body before the woods slipped so easily into your skin and blacked out your mind, as if nobody was ever home to start with. It just happens and then—

When you come to, it’s pitch black. You blink, cast your head around, this way and that, but everywhere you turn is just another dark wall plastered to your retina. Your fingers catch against your temple, like you’re trying to rip a blindfold away, but there’s nothing. You can’t help but wonder if Cabeswater has _blinded_ you, but your other senses falter too; your good ear can’t pick up a single noise. There’s a wide absence, like something’s blocked, and once you’ve managed to shakily get to your feet and put your hands out, there’s hard stone, cold to the touch. You’re in a cave.

And you can’t tell which way is out.

The air is stale, earthy, dank. You run your hand over the dry, dusty walls and find that if you put both your arms out, you can touch both sides of the cave. There’s no way to tell how deep you are, besides deep enough that there’s no light, no breeze, not a hint of any other world than the one around you.

You don’t think; you just pick a direction and start walking. You can still feel the ley line, but it’s too weak to be much of a guide. Maybe it’s weak because you’re far from Cabeswater, maybe it’s weak because you’re miles underground. Even though it’s only a thought, you imagine the weight of the earth above you, tens of thousands of tonnes of dirt and rock, all of it straining, groaning, threatening to press down. You wouldn’t have a moment’s warning before you were buried.

If you don’t get out, you think even Gansey won’t be able to find your body. He would never stop looking.

After some unknowable length of time – one minute? one hour? the dark has stolen your senses – the slope of the walls start to change. They press in a little more with every step you take until your elbows are bent at your sides, your hands flat up against the cave walls, and your hair brushes the cave ceiling - or, what’s on the cave ceiling brushes your hair.

The walls seem to be shuddering closed all around you and you turn and bolt blindly in the other direction. Your heartbeat thuds in your hot ears, blotting out the sound of your footsteps and the ringing, deafening silence. The air is too dense to breathe, murky and dead and sick in your lungs, but you suck in ragged, shaky mouthfuls and try not to gag on the lifeless taste.

The walls rush past under your fingertips, the only sign you’re moving at all, the only way you can feel the cave widening. Your eyes strain against the sheet of darkness, trying to pick out shapes, movement, light, but every shimmer is a ghost placed by your brain, so desperate for something to be there.

It happens so slowly that you don’t notice; black shifting to deep grey to a beckoning midnight blue. Fresh air finally, mercifully finds you, reaches out to you and licks coolly at your hot skin. You chase it up and out of the cave, swallowing greedy mouthfuls of air that the cave hasn’t digested, and emerge into what smells like Cabeswater but looks like a forest of inky trees, hazy in the night. It’s impossible to recognise the forest like this, to find your bearings in the unknown gut of the woods. You could be anywhere.

Behind you, the cave is just a crack in a rock, small enough that your eyes skip over it the first time you look, nothing about the sliver of its mouth betraying the depth of its gullet. There are no distant lights of Henrietta, no sound of the road, not even summer’s insect calls. It’s a supernatural silence and it gives the world a dreamlike quality once again, like you’re in a half-finished, imagined place, like your brain couldn’t supply the sounds in time.

You’re still wearing your court suit. Cabeswater didn’t care that it’s the nicest thing you own. Cabeswater marched you through the woods and into a cave; it let the fine fabric catch and pull on branches and rock walls, it let the forest rip and muddy the threads. Even in the dim light, you can see the extent of the damage is devastating. It took too many pay cheques to buy. It will take too many pay cheques to fix. You fight down hot, furious tears, you try to tether your anger, you try not to howl and fight the woods because what good could it do? What can you possibly do on your own anymore? You have never been less.

You wade through the forest, finally feeling the ache in your legs - who knows how far you’ve walked? - trying to watch the stars through the canopy to orient yourself. They ley line is quiet. You can’t tell if it’s due to distance, or if it has finally abandoned you. You think about not knowing where you are, and you think about not knowing how to get home, and you do not think about what you just lost because if you do then you’ll break down and not be able to get up again.

You start to hear voices, calls so distant through the filter of the trees that they could be hundreds of miles away. At first, you assume it’s Cabeswater, though it doesn’t sound like Latin and it doesn’t have the restless, whispering breath of the trees. Then you think it’s wishful thinking. You want so desperately to not be alone, your mind it trying to make it so, to place phantoms through the forest to call and call, comfort you can never reach.

And then you hear, “ _Adam!_ ” and it’s _real_ , it’s real and they came for you. You sound hoarse, vocal chords coiled up and tangled tight with all your swallowed grief, but you scream back as best you can, “ _I’m here!_ ”

There’s silence after, filled with the fear that it was in your head after all, but the answer comes, just one fraction closer. “ _We’re coming_.”

You push through the trees, calling out while they cry back, like some gross mockery of a children’s game. The gnarled arms of the trees still catch you, but you push forward, ragged and relentless, beyond caring about new damage to your unsalvageable suit. You just need to not be alone, to not drown in the inky dark of the woods.

Their flashlight finds you first, and you blink dazedly into the beam, trusting they’re behind it, and then it drops; Gansey’s sighing, “Oh, thank god,” and Ronan’s staring at you with such raw relief that it hurts to look at him. You fall into place between them, Ronan quietly putting a hand on your back to steady you, and then they lead you out of the woods.

None of you talk. They must know by now what you missed.

“I’ll take you home,” Ronan offers as you reach the edge of the trees.

“Didn’t I drive?”

“We found your car,” Gansey says grimly. “Broken down, halfway along the road, one door hanging open. Someone spray-painted it.”

You close your eyes. More time, more money.

The Camaro and the BMW are both parked at the entrance of the woods, and you imagine the combined search effort they would have put out for you, your car too far from Cabeswater to give any clues. You wonder how long it would have taken you to find your own way out of the woods without them, how long it would take you to find your broken car and walk home. You should thank them, but your throat is closed and dry.

Ronan drives you back to St Agnes without comment, but still you wish the BMW’s engine was louder, an excuse not to talk instead of an obvious absence of words. You notice, finally, that he’s in a suit; dressed for court, and something in you swells with thick regret, something you need to beat down before it overwhelms you.

He doesn’t leave when you get to the church. He follows you up the stairs, stands in your room. His arms are crossed and his eyes are intent, like he’s waiting for something, but you just want to sink onto your bed and disappear.

You don’t have it in you to guess at what he wants, so you just shrug at him, the weakest gesture, and ask, “What, Ronan?”

“If you’d told us it was your fucking court date,” he starts, and you taste bile, because you’d expected this from Gansey but not from him, not right now. Ronan’s as direct as the point of a knife and you draw away from it. “We could have _done_ something, Parrish; we could have found you sooner, we could have fucking rescheduled before the case got thrown out.”

“Don’t,” you choke out. “Just don’t— just _go_.”

It’s too much; everything hits you, all at once, and it finally shoves you right over the edge. You turn away from him, your face buried in your dirty hands, and your throat gapes and aches with the need to scream and shout about _everything –_ about Ronan, about Cabeswater, about skipped school, about missed work, about your broken-down car, about your ruined suit, about your lack of funds, about your lack of time, about your lack of sleep, about the court case you lost before you even had a chance to _try_.

Of all the days for this to happen – your _fucking court date_. 

The first sob punches out of you, hoarse and exhausted and unbearably loud in the quiet of your room. Ronan moves to stand behind you and you desperately want him to leave, to be pitiful and pathetic on your own, because you’ve felt vulnerable enough in front of him tonight without having him see you cry too. Your chest heaves and shivers with tears but Ronan doesn’t let that shake him off; his arms circle your waist and curl up your back and he clutches you with impossible strength, a challenge for anything to try and tear him away. He’s never held you so tightly before; the pain of his bones pressed into yours is a nice, earthly distraction from the cosmic force of your loss. You can feel his worry radiate off him, a hold you lean into. It’s a mistake; you fall into the relief of him too easily and now you’re not trapped, not lost, there’s room to think again. Bitter misery wells up in you, pours out of you, and you’re clinging to Ronan before you mean to, before you can stop yourself.

You wonder if your father spat “coward” into the sidewalk as he left the courtroom. You wonder if he was even surprised you didn’t show.

You try not to think about it and fail and fail and fail, every time. You’ve been scraped raw until everything in you is hot and excruciating. Your pride has been flayed off you, and the worst of it is that no one even had to see you for it to happen. Very, very faintly, and just for a fleeting moment that you immediately try to take back, you think it would have been better if you hadn’t found your way back. But that’s a jinx you don’t need and you push it away.

Minutes have passed and Ronan is still here. He hasn’t walked out on you, he hasn’t mocked you, he hasn’t snapped at you to get it together. Even _Ronan Lynch_ is letting you be this weak, and you have the small revelation that maybe this is the point of a healthy relationship. Maybe you’re allowed to be vulnerable in front of him, maybe it’s okay.

You try to temper your sobs and swallow back the bulk of your grief. You decide that you trust him enough to admit, voice groggy, “It’s ruining my life.”

Ronan scoffs, but it’s not entirely unkind, not with his arms still steady around you. “It’s not a proper sacrifice if there’s no cost to you, Parrish.”

Of course it’s not. Of course you’d known there would be a price, an arcane cost metered out in your blood. But so little had changed to start with, you’d begun to think you’d be okay. “Things were fine before,” you mumble, knowing how pathetic it sounds. ‘Fine’ wasn’t great, not even back then, but trying to divine the demands of the trees was so much more bearable than this hideous puppetry. You breathe, try to restore yourself, and admit something so shameful you’re not sure you could say it in front of Gansey. “Cabeswater won’t speak to me at all anymore.”

“Well,” Ronan says, startling you with the strength of his fire. “It listens to _me_.”

You don’t want to need him. You don’t want to be grateful. But relief sweeps through you, low and encompassing, and you finally pull back to catch the hard look in his eye. You must look so unattractive with your red, watery eyes and your dirt-smudged face and your torn clothes, but Ronan still cradles the side of your head like you’re the dearest thing he’s ever had.

“We’ll fix it,” he promises, low and fierce. “We’ll put it right.”

 

They all go with you, into the woods. Your eyes are bruised dark with exhaustion - every time you tried to sleep, you imagined cold stone around you, deep, deafening emptiness - and you feel thin and worn through. Blue speaks to you very kindly, a sure sign you’re a wreck. You feel like a wreck. But Ronan has a dangerously determined gleam in his eye, and you dare to hope that it might be the last time you’ll feel this way.

You move too slow; the others walk up a few paces ahead while Ronan keeps to your side. It’s always easier to walk with him for some reason, and you think you know why. He’s the only one to remember that you’re deaf in one ear and, in turn, which ear that is. While the others will switch sides with you at random and continue to chat like you’re still completely capable of hearing, Ronan unfalteringly keeps to your right side, like a habit he ingrained himself, just for your comfort.

You’d hold his hand, but the last thing you need is any sniggers or looks.

You all finally stumble upon the Dreaming Tree and you sit by the stream, a little away from the others, because you don’t want to talk. Ronan knows what you want and he’s going to do all of the talking for you.

He speaks Latin too fast and too fluent for you to keep up with, and the others just look baffled, as if they can’t even hope to catch a single word of it. Gansey wears a vaguely distressed expression, like he doesn’t think this bodes very well for his upcoming Latin test, and he looks to you for some kind of translation. You just shrug back at him.

When Ronan pauses to wait for a response, Cabeswater gives him one instantly. The leaves rustle indistinctly, murmured whispers, oddly reverent, and Adam grinds the sole of his shoe into the forest floor. He tries to temper the resentment in his blood that threatens to boil over.

It continues for a while, back and forth, back and forth, Ronan’s responses coming increasingly sharper and heated. Blue and Noah make faces at each other and Gansey makes relentless attempts to keep up with the conversation, occasionally repeating a word that was very _similar_ to a word Ronan had said, but was not in fact the word Ronan had said.

But once in a while, Gansey makes a correct translation. “Did he say _fire?_ ” Gansey hisses to you, and you can’t help the little smile that pulls on the corner of your lip.

“Yeah, he did.”

Gansey sounds appalled. “He’s not threatening to burn down Cabeswater, is he?”

You watch Ronan casually lean on a trunk as he smoothly informs Cabeswater, tone abruptly even, that if it doesn’t stop treating you like a puppet then it can happily go up in flames.

It doesn’t take a few seconds for Cabeswater to concede, and you don’t know if Cabeswater is sentient enough to have an attitude, but if it did, now would’ve been the perfect time to show it.

Ronan smiles, triumphant and just a little bit smug. He notices your eyes on him and flashes you a thumbs up, and you try to tell yourself that you’re not really as in love with him as you think you are in this moment.

You mouth over to him, “Thank you.”

 

Though you’re fairly certain that Ronan never actually _would_ , Cabeswater still takes heed of his threat. A week later, you feel Cabeswater reach out to you; your heart almost leaps from your chest when you blink and find that you’re still there, unmoved, reality still intact, hours not lost. You leisurely fetch your tarot deck and flip out a card and— God, have you missed Cabeswater’s incomprehensible nonsense. You can’t make sense of it, but you have the _opportunity_ to make sense of it. To complete the task whenever suits you best.

You promise Cabeswater that you _will,_ but not now. In the weekend, when you have some hours free.

It waits for you. It listens.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!!!! come bother [me](http://telekinesiskid.tumblr.com/) and [my wife](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) if you like!


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